Balance
by True Dawn
Summary: Anakin may have fallen, but the reasons were a little more complicated one might think. A look Anakins fall and Redemption


You've won.

Even if you failed at everything else in your life, this child in front of you makes it all worth it. He is good, decent and brave. He is the hero Anakin Skywalker should have been.

Your whole life has been one of slavery. You were a slave on Tatooine and learnt about violence, hatred and revenge. You were a slave to the Jedi and learnt that even those who claim to be good can, in their own way, be as cruel as those who are truly evil. You were a slave to Palpatine and learnt for all your power, you were only were ever a pawn in a much larger game.

Today however you've made a choice that no one but your son suspected you would (or could) make. And (this makes you laugh just thinking about it) you did it out of love. A force that neither the Sith or the Jedi ever really understood.

Mum taught you about the importance of love. You loved her more than anything else in the world and when you left her, part of you always regretted it. Looking back on the path your life has taken; now you regret it even more.

When you joined the Jedi you were told you couldn't talk to your mother anymore. In fact you weren't allowed to have any attachments. Do you know what that felt like? You were nine years old and were told that you could no longer talk to the woman that had raised you from birth. You were told that loving your mother as much as you did was wrong, that it would lead you down the dark path. Is it any wonder that you didn't believe most of what the Jedi taught you?

You had soon became disillusioned by the Jedi. You had wanted to become a Jedi to help people. You had dreams of one day returning to Tatooine and freeing all the slaves.

You quickly found out that would not be the case.

Oh, Jedi helped people, but only when the senate approved. And even before the clone wars you had problems with some of the people we did help. There were planets where you put down rebellions when agreed they were right, but because the government was a part of the republic you helped the other side.

In the end Jedi where little more than mouth pieces for the galactic senate.

And the senate was so corrupt.

You once asked Obi-Wan why the Jedi would not free your mother, they had the money. He said it wouldn't be fair just to free one person and besides you weren't allowed to see your mother anymore anyway. You told him that wasn't it fairer to free one person than none. He didn't have an answer for that.

On a later occasion you asked why the Jedi just didn't use their power to free all the slaves. He told me as horrible as the situation was, the Jedi were knights of the Republic and what non-republic plants did was none of their business. The Jedi would only get involved if the senate tried to end slavery galaxy wide and they wouldn't as that would led to war with the Hutts. Apparently the senate didn't want to start a galaxy wide war.

Of course they were quite eager to start a war when the richer members of the Republic started to form the Confederation of Independent Systems. And they were quite happy to use slaves to fight for them too. What else would you call the clones?

In the end, is it all that surprising that you helped destroy the Republic?

The beginning of the clone wars also marked the end of your faith in the Jedi. Before the war started, you had been having dreams of your mother in pain. When you told the Obi-wan about them, his only piece of advice was 'dreams pass in time'. You begged him to let you go to Tatooine to check on her, you even asked the council directly. Neither one let you go; after all, she was an attachment. If they had only showed some compassion and let you go, she would still be alive today.

And you never would have taken your first steps down a path that almost destroyed you.

You considered leaving the Jedi after that (not to mention you were now married), but by that time you didn't know how to be anything else. There was also the nagging thought in the back of your mind if the Jedi wouldn't even let you. After all, you were their precious chosen one and the Jedi were already worried about you falling to the darkness.

The Jedi believed that they were the ultimate good.

And they were very, very wrong.

The Jedi never really knew real love as they were taken from their parents at birth. Although parents are allowed to keep their children (who wants their child to have a dangerous and loveless life?) they were often persuaded not to. They are informed that if they're not trained they are easily susceptible to falling to the dark side, not to mention their abilities will make them outcasts from their peers. Personally you think this is a load of rubbish. You were the most powerful force-user to ever exist and you were a much better person before the Jedi found you.

Most of the bad feeling between you and the council came from your arguments with the council. Unlike the rest of the Jedi, you could not accept something without understanding the why behind it. And you could never understand the reasons behind some of the things the Jedi believe. The Jedi are indoctrinated in the Jedi ways at birth and never question what they're taught. Sometimes you thought they didn't understand the real would at all.

Even the Jedi code is wrong. Peace is not the opposite of passion.

Apathy is.

You tried to explain your own views to Obi-Wan on multiple occasions but he could never conceive of the Jedi being wrong. In the end, this was what drove you to Palpatine (and yes, looking back you realize this was stupid). He was the only one who actually listened to you.

When you had dreams of you wife dying you didn't know what to do. You couldn't go to the Jedi (they proved that with mum), so when Palpatine offered a way…

You not proud of what you did, but you hadn't sleep properly in days and you couldn't trust the Jedi. And you had already lost so much…

You fell but the Jedi pushed you there.

Still you told the Jedi what you knew, but you couldn't stay in the temple and so you followed them to Palaptine's office. And when you got there you saved Palatines life. After all back then Palatine was a mentor to you and from your point of view, the Jedi were about to murder him.

And so you saved him. And doomed yourself.

You don't remember the next parts very well; you were dead on your feet and a little in shock (sometimes you wonder if you blocked it out). You remember flashes of the attack on the Jedi temple, you remember strangling Padme.

You remember burning alive.

You killed the Tuscons because they killed your mother. You attacked the temple because the Jedi had never given you a reason to save them. You destroyed the Republic because it was broken and nothing could fix it. You murdered the separatists because by that point they paled in comparison.

You never meant to hurt Padme. The Jedi told you to release your anger. They never taught you how to control it. When you thought she betrayed you …

What remained of Anakin died that day.

Even as Vader you never forgave youself.

You helped create the Empire and, although it had problems (mainly an evil emperor) so had the Republic. Rebels arose that opposed the emperor but you know that, regardless of their claims, the republic had never been perfect. Of course by that time you were past caring about politics. Or anything.

After Padme died you had nothing left. You were hollow inside and killed to try and fill the void. It didn't work. You did everything Palpatine asked. You just didn't care anymore.

Then you herd the name Luke Skywalker. Your child lived!

And Anakin Skywalker began to return.

He saved you, your son. Despite all the Jedi told him he didn't believe you were beyond redemption. He too understood love.

And it made him more of a Jedi than the order had ever been.

Palatine tried to kill him when he wouldn't turn. He thought he could try again with your daughter (and you still can't quite believe you have one).

Palatine tried to kill him and you remembered that you once promised you would have the power to save people. You couldn't save mum, you didn't save Padme and you killed Obi-wan.

You did save your son.

Palatine managed to turn you to his side, because you loved your wife and you knew the Jedi wouldn't have helped. You turned on Palpatine because now he had became a threat to what you loved. Did he really think you wouldn't?

Luke was right when he called Palpatine overconfident.

And the Jedi were wrong when they called love a weakness.

You never believed that the force was as clear cut as the Sith and Jedi believed. Normal people feel both love and hate without turning evil. And normal people who just hate and hate and hate are evil. In the end It's all about balance.

The force was out of balance, but the Jedi never stopped to think about what balance meant. Didn't they find it odd that there were two Sith and thousands of Jedi, and yet the force appeared to be in the Siths favour. You affect the force not the other way around.

The Sith were full of so much hatred that the very force they used became as corrupted as they were. The Jedi felt so little that it never balanced out. You ended up fulfilling the Prophecy by destroying them both.

Now you son is all that's left.

Luke grew up surrounding by love and no matter what the Jedi Order said he won't give that up. He understands the real world better than the Jedi ever did, its why he knew you could be saved.

The Jedi never did learn. They separated Luke and his sister. If Padme was alive you knew she would have objected. If she had lived you wonder if they would have done it regardless. When you saw into you sons mind you learnt that they then tried to persuade him to kill his own father. You're not surprised he didn't agree with them.

The Jedi always said that no one ever returned from the dark side, but did they ever try?

Obi-wan said he loved you, but he never tried to save you.

Perhaps no one ever came back because they didn't have good enough reason. You did

And you saved your son because of an emotion both the Jedi and the Sith scorned. Good and evil didn't even matter.

Now Jedi are dead and the Sith are dead.

And Luke will see the Jedi rise again as something better.

So its turns out you won. The Jedi will become what you always wished they would be.

How ironic that now you've won the ultimate victory, you don't care. Your children are safe and free.

And that is enough.


End file.
